When Stones Fall
by DARWIN51
Summary: Jody shows Mitch and Andrea his new girlfriend, but he doesn't know that Andrea has a past with this girl, and the girl doesn't know it either. A short piece of a larger story. Andrea's past. Angst, Friendship. First story of category! Only 8 years late.
1. Chapter 1

**This is just a very, very, very small experimental snippet of my larger story of Andrea's life. I know almost no one has seen this show so this is purely experimental, for shits and giggles. But hey, if I actually get unexpected feedback, I'll consider adding more parts, it's happened before. It's a little rough, I wasn't sure how to convey good dialog and text when the reader likely doesn't know much about the characters. So here's this. **

Crumbs.

"Is your shift over?" Mitch asked, rounding the corner out of the Stonehouse Grill office and towards the employee lockers.

"Yeah. I can't stay long though, I'm meeting some friends later." Andrea was pulling her sweater out of her locker and putting her waitress' apron back in. She took her phone out of the apron pocket and handed it to Mitch to hold while she started to put her sweater on.

"Oh, well Jody wanted us to meet his new girlfriend really quick."

"New girlfriend?"

"Yeah. I guess not "new", apparently they're somewhat serious. Somewhat."

Andrea reached to put her sweater back in her locker just as Jody appeared in the hall, "Mitch, she's waiting. Andrea, you wanna come meet Rachel?"

"Uh, sure-" She started, but Jody had already disappeared.

Mitch and Andrea started off through the kitchen. "You're not jealous." Mitch stated.

"No, why would I be?" Andrea asked.

"I don't know. I think Jody was expecting you to be jealous."

"And he's getting some sort of rise out of that?" She smirked.

"…You know Jody."

They approached a table where Jody was standing, and a girl in her early twenties sat in the booth seat. She had light brown hair that fell in thick strands that curled at the ends, and was smiling at them.

"Rachel, this is my brother Mitch, and our friend Andrea I was telling you about. Guys, this is Rachel Adamson. So, like, get acquainted or something, because I think she'll be sticking around for a while." Jody smiled and rubbed his hands together quickly, which he usually does when he's hungry. "I'll grab us some drinks."

Mitch took the initiative and began talking first. "So uh, Rachel. It's nice to finally meet you." He gave a warm smile, and moved to sit down, but realized Andrea wasn't moving with him.

Andrea just stood there, staring at Rachel uncomfortable, as pale as a ghost.

Mitch frowned at her and turned around to whisper in her ear, so Rachel couldn't see, "Are you alright?"

After a short delay, Andrea swallowed and nodded, whispering "Yeah. I'm fine."

Mitch turned back to sit down, as Jody returned with a tray of drinks.

Just as Jody returned, Andrea turned and began walking towards the kitchen.

Thinking she was acting jealous, Jody set the tray down on the table and smiled at Rachel, saying sweetly, "I'll be right back."

He turned to follow Andrea, and Mitch was right on his heels, afraid he might yell at her or something.

Jody shoved the kitchen door open, and called out to Andrea, who was across the kitchen, "Hey! What the hell?!"

Not wanting to draw more attention, Andrea stopped and slowly turned around. "I need to go-"

"You know that was extremely rude. Just because seeing me with another woman makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean you have to act so-"

"Not everything is about you, Jody!" She shouted, drawing more attention.

Jody paused, "…So what's your problem, then? Because she was actually really looking forward to meeting you guys, and she didn't do anything to deserve your attitude-"

"Because she killed my sister!" Andrea said, thankfully a bit quieter than her last statement.

Both Jody and Mitch froze, and silence fell over the kitchen.

Mitch asked softly, "What…what do you mean?"

Figuring she had already caused too much of a disturbance to go without an explanation now, and she really just wanted to get her point across to Jody and leave, she said quietly, "Look, I knew she looked familiar when I saw her, and when I heard that name…She was one of the girls who was there when Amy drowned. I understand that it was a very long time ago, and that they were all very young, and that it's really not her fault. I have nothing against her I just…need to take a minute. Not for her, not for you…for myself."

She turned and left quietly, as the kitchen staff were forced to focus on their jobs again, no matter how interesting workplace drama was.

Mitch and Jody still stood in the doorway of the kitchen, shocked, and kind of unsure what to do. In all the time they'd known Andrea, she'd mentioned her family only a handful of times. They had first met her when she was 9 years old, only a few weeks after her sister died, and she moved in next door. With how little she ever mentioned what happened to her sister, or the rest of her family, it was easy for the Crumbs to tell themselves she probably just wasn't affected by it. So to hear her mention her sister just now, in front of all the kitchen staff, well, you could say it was more than a shock to Mitch and Jody.

Jody reluctantly turned to go back to Rachel, waiting at the table, while Mitch contemplated going after Andrea or just leaving it. Suddenly, Mitch realized he still had her phone in his pocket.

He ran out the back, past the empty lockers and office, and opened the back employee's entrance, but her car was already gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Crumbs Chapter 2

"Alright," Mitch said, hanging up his cell phone and setting it down on the end table. "That was Andrea calling from a friend's phone. She says she's on her way to come pick her phone up."

"Okay, and I want a little bit more of an explanation." Jody said, not sounding at all annoyed, but rather concerned, which is rare for Jody. "She can't just accuse my girlfriend of murder…" He paced around the hallway of his mother's house, between the living room and the kitchen.

"Did you ask Rachel about it yet?" Mitch asked.

"Hell no. I'm not bringing her into this, not until we at least know for sure it's really her Andrea's talking about."

"You think she's lying?"

"I think she might be confused."

"We're talking about Andrea here. She _never_ mentions her family. The one time she does, so bluntly, especially in front of the whole kitchen staff… I think she'd have to be pretty sure of what she was saying."

"It was like twenty years ago, why should we assume that she knows what she's saying?" Jody challenged.

Mitch leaned one hand on the table and the other rested on his hip. "She recognized Rachel when you said her name, not by her face. Rachel is the same age Andrea's sister would be, right?"

"A lot of people are in their mid twenties, Mitch, listen to yourself. _I'm_ in my mid twenties."

"No you're not Jody, you're thirty-two. How old is Rachel?"

"Pfft. I don't know." Jody said, crossing his arms. "You don't ask a woman that, Mitch. I suppose you wouldn't know…"

"Was she an orphan?"

"What?"

"Was she ever in an orphanage? If I recall, that's where Andrea's sister was when she drowned."

"No. She has parents. She even invited me to meet them." Jody said, effectively ending that conversation.

Mitch flopped down on the couch and spent a few minutes trying to think about everything he has learned about Andrea's past over the nearly twenty years he's known her.

About twenty minutes later, the front door swung open and Andrea stepped inside, keeping one foot in the doorway, ready to leave. "Hey. Thanks for watching my phone. Where is it?"

Mitch walked over slowly, phone in hand. Jody stood back with his arms folded. "Are you alright?" Mitch asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Andrea looked genuinely surprised that he would ask that.

"You don't look fine. Your eyes are red." Mitch stepped closer.

"I yawned. Can I have my phone?"

"Whoa," Jody said comically, stepping forward and looking close into Andrea's eyes. "You're wasted." He said with half a laugh.

"I am not _wasted!_"

"Are you drunk?" Mitch asked.

"…A little bit."

"Andrea! You left like forty minutes ago and you're already drunk! Where the heck did you go?"

"I told you I had plans. I was at a party."

"And you're driving drunk? Get in the house." Mitch urged sternly. Just the thought of losing his best friend in an avoidable car crash made him sick.

"What are you, my mother? I'm barely drunk, now give me my phone!"

"Get in here and sit down, you're not driving, I wanna talk to you."

She looked ready to just walk out the door without the phone when Jody said, "You can't just drop a bomb like that in front of everybody and expect us to brush it off. Especially when you're accusing my girlfriend of a serious crime."

Andrea stepped inside the house and let the door fall shut behind her. "I'm not accusing her of anything, I was just saying that I recognized the name and I was _really_ caught off guard. All I was doing was leaving, when _you_ started accusing me of being selfish and jealous." Her tone was soft.

"When did you hear her name?" Jody was skeptical.

Andrea sighed and leaned back against the door, pressing her palms to the door at her sides. "Remember when you were little, and you'd get called down to the principal's office?"

"Yes." Jody said, at the same time Mitch said, "No."

Andrea let out a slight breath of a laugh, and gave a brief smile, brushing her hair out of her face with one hand. "Well, in an orphanage, the principal is called the Supervisor, and everyone else is called the Caregivers. Essentially, we all got called down to the "principal's office". Me, a few girls who knew Amy, the Supervisor, two Caregivers from that night, and a lawyer hired by the orphanage. Tell me how fair you think something is when only one side is represented by a lawyer?"

"Not very fair." Mitch said automatically.

"Right. Sorry, that wasn't my point. There were five little girls in that room, all around my sister's age. They were all involved. We went over the legalities so many times, I couldn't get their names out of my head if I wanted to. One of those names was Rachel Adamson. I don't think she would've recognized me at the Stonehouse, but I recognized her. Look, they were little kids, I know how that is. I was just caught off guard. I don't hold a grudge against her or anything, alright? It just surprised me, is all. Okay?"

No one said anything for a while, until Jody folded his arms and said, "Say this Rachel you're talking about was actually _my_ Rachel, just pathetically speaking,"

"Hypothetically." Mitch corrected.

Jody ignored him. "If this was the same girl… would you forgive her?"

"…No."

"What! You just said they were little kids, they didn't know any better!"

"Okay, I didn't say that they didn't know any better. By six years old you know damn well enough to go fucking tell someone when your friend falls into the river!" Andrea took a breath. "Sorry. Look. If you found out that your neighbor kid at the lake house messed with the gas line that caused the explosion on the boat and killed Patrick, would you forgive him because he was "just being a kid?""

"…Alright that's not a fair comparison!"

"Actually Jody, that's incredibly accurate." Mitch said.

"There was no need to bring my dead brother into this!" Jody said.

"This whole thing is about her dead sister!" Mitch said.

Andrea apologized anyway. "Sorry."

"Stop apologizing!" Mitch said.

"Sorry! I mean-"

"Andrea, look, I've finally found a girl who I really like, and she really likes me. I'm not gonna let that be torn apart because of my brother's best friend's paranoia."

"Oh, _please_ Jody if you could hear yourself for one second-!" Andrea snapped.

"Alright, alright! Everybody calm down!" Mitch just barely avoided Jody and Andrea literally coming to blows. "Jody, maybe you should try listening to at least one single word Andrea's saying, because you're clearly not getting her point. And Andrea, well… I have no excuse for my brother."

Andrea finally made the move to snatch her phone from Mitch's hand when he wasn't expecting it, and she flung the door open and left, pulling it shut quickly behind her.


End file.
